Riverside Drive
At New York's most-sought-after address, passions and secrets collide, and love is destroyed, then found again in the most unlikely placeMichael and Cassie Cochran are television's perfect couple, but the veneer of their enviable marriage is starting to crack. And only one of them is trying to salvage it.Sam and Harriet Wyatt have spent a lifetime getting to where they are, but they could lose it all in the blink of an eye after Sam stumbles upon a corporate secret.Howard Stewart has the perfect job and the perfect wife–both of which are a perfect lie.Amanda Miller has wealth, fame and a lifetime of heartache. She's given up on men–until she meets the one she can't resist.Step onto Riverside Drive, where friends and neighbors determine each other's destinies.
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Praise for LAURA VAN WORMER and RIVERSIDE DRIVE
“SHE IS A BORN STORYTELLER!”
—Esther Shapiro, cocreator of Dynasty
“STEAMY…You’ll never watch the TV evening news with such indifference again!”
—Los Angeles Times
“AMBITIOUS!”
—Newsday
“REALISTIC…from cocktail party to block party, through marital and job strife…her realistic characters…combined with occasional blasts of sensational sex, will keep her readers turning the pages.”
—Publishers Weekly
“LIVELY AND CONSISTENTLY ENTERTAINING…
With laugh-out-loud humor and fine appreciation for surprise, Van Wormer moves her characters’ stories briskly…. Well-drawn scenes, deft juggling of plots and subplots, and an ample supply of energetic and well-documented sex…Characters to care about and root for, long after the author’s last word.”
—Stamford Advocate
“SEXY!”
—Kirkus Reviews
“UNIQUE!”
—The Beacon (Macon, MS)
Also by LAURA VAN WORMER
WEST END*
BENEDICT CANYON ANY GIVEN MOMENT*
JURY DUTY TALK*
JUST FOR THE SUMMER
The Sally Harrington Novels
EXPOSÉ*
THE LAST LOVER*
TROUBLE BECOMES HER*
THE BAD WITNESS*
THE KILL FEE*
MR. MURDER*
And look for RIVERSIDE PARK*,
In Memory of My Mother
Margaret Garner Van Wormer
And for My Father
Benjamin Francis Van Wormer
And My “New” Mother
Marjorie Law Ault Van Wormer
I would still be talking rather than writing had it not been for two extraordinary individuals named Loretta Barrett and Ann Douglas. Their wisdom, generosity and powers of reassurance are awe-inspiring. Their spirit is, too. I can only wonder at my good fortune in having met them in this life and say, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for all you have taught me.
CONTENTS
1
The Cochrans have a party
Cassy Cochran was upset.
Michael, her husband, had gone to pick up ice four hours ago and hadn’t been seen since; Henry, her son, was supposed to be back from Shea Stadium but wasn’t; and Rosanne, the cleaning woman, was currently threatening the new bartender in the kitchen with deportation proceedings if he didn’t see her way of doing things.
Not a terrific beginning for a party that Cassy absolutely did not want to have.
“Hey, Mrs. C?” It was Rosanne, standing in the doorway to the living room.
Cassy turned.
“If Mr. C comes back, he’s gonna be pretty upset about how this guy’s settin’ up the bar. Could you—” She frowned suddenly and leaned her head back into the kitchen. “What?” she said. “Well, it’s about time.” Rosanne swung back around the doorway, waving her hand. “Never mind, Mrs. C, Mr. Moscow here suddenly understands English.”
Cassy smiled, shaking her head slightly, and then surveyed the living room. It was a very large, very airy room that, in truth, almost anything would look marvelous in. And Cassy’s taste for antiques (or “early attic,” as Michael described her preference) was especially fitting, seeing as every floorboard in the apartment creaked. But then, the apartment was really much more like a house, a big old country farmhouse, only with high ceilings. And windows. The three largest rooms—the living room, the master bedroom and Henry’s room—all had huge windows facing out on the Hudson River.
The windows had been washed this week. Before, shrouded in a misty gray, the view from the twelfth floor had been eerily reminiscent of London on what Henry called a Sherlock Holmes kind of day. But no, this was New York; and the winter’s soot had all been washed away and the late afternoon April sun, setting across the river in New Jersey, was, at this moment, flooding the living room with gentle light.
For a woman from the Midwest, the view from the Cochrans’ apartment never failed to slightly astonish Cassy. This was New York City? That steely, horrid, ugly place that her mother had warned her about? No, no…Mother had been wrong. Hmmm. Mother had been right about many things, but no, not about New York. Not here. Not the place the Cochrans had made their home.
Sometimes the view made Cassy long to cry. The feeling—whatever it was—would start deep in her chest, slowly rise to her throat and then catch there, hurting her, Cassy unable to bring it up or to press it back down from where it had come. She was feeling that now, holding on to the sash of the middle window, looking out, her forehead resting against the glass.
The Cochrans lived at 162 Riverside Drive, on the north corner of 88th Street. Looking down from the window, Cassy’s eyes crossed over the Drive to the promenade that marked the edge of Riverside Park. The promenade was arbored by maple, oak and elm trees, underneath which, across from the Cochrans’, were a line of cannons from the Revolutionary War, still aimed out toward unseen enemy ships. To the right, up a block, was the gigantic stone terrace around the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, a circular, pillared tower patterned after the monument of Lysicrates in Athens. But this part of Riverside Drive was built on a major bluff, and it was beneath it that lay the heart of the park’s glory.
